Posts Tagged ‘Germany’

Yesterday we got to watch Germany vs Spain. Didn’t get access to a computer until I got back to Johannesburg so sorry for the delay. The best team won, Spain totally took Germany out of the game, no idea what the posession percentage was, but Germany couldn’t have had it much. Chris Jr continues to get lots of attention, and is very popular with the ladies, much like Chris Sr. There were some fans which missed the game because of issues with their flights, to them I say, what the hell were you thinking? Who leaves their travel to a flight that is supposed to get in a couple of hours early? So now we will have a historic World Cup final, with neither the Netherlands or Spain having won the competition. I have more friends that are Dutch, so I think I’ll be rooting for them.

We did see a person invade the pitch early on in the game, and unfortunately, the security didn’t beat the crap out of him as I had been told would happen. Oh well, I did video what happened.

One of the things I have mentioned on the IdoNotes blog here is how this is a community event. Global community. Countries really do not matter when it comes to who you talk to, walk next to, stand next to our share a bag of crisps.

After the Ghana versus Germany game, we were honored to meet some wonderful South Africans that allowed us to do the following interviews. Carl did the first one, with Andy playing the instrumental.

Andy took on the second interview of a wonderful couple that has traveled the world. They even took time after to teach the Shosholoza song

We raced back from Durban to rest about an hour before heading to the train station for Ghana versus Germany. This promised to be a good game as both teams needed to perform to advance. After our parking experience the other day when catching the train to Soccer City, we learned an important lesson about private garages around the parking zone. Mainly when the main parking is free at the train platforms.

Let me describe free. You are able to park on the street as well as in the lot, no charge for the World Cup event around Park Station. However, when leaving, the staff runs to walk you to your car, make sure you back out correctly even if you are the only car and then expect some form of “tip”. So in essence you do pay to park a small amount, just not officially. The private parking charges unstated pricing depending on the mood and what you are willing.

So we parked on the platforms (the streets were full already) and as we entered the train station we were told that the last train to Soccer City was boarding. It was a good 90 minutes before the game, for a fifteen minute train ride. The end result is we made the train fine with Carl running. Yes. You read what I said.

After we moved with the sea of people, we did our intro video.

Inside it was loud as ever with huge grouping of German and Ghana fans. In the opposite corner of our seats was an entire section of German fans that never sat down and were told to remove some banners. A small disturbance of locals hitting each other with vuvuzelas to our left made the entire game interesting. Yet the fans were wonderful, excited, talkative to each other and just there for a good match.

As you can see, the fans were awesome and we had excellent seats for the game.